12 Expert Tips to Bring Instagram Traffic to Your Website

As of June 2018, there were over 1 billion active users on Instagram, making it one of the most used social media platforms around the world. Its rapid growth and high engagement rates have drawn in brands, each vying for the attention and engagement of their audiences. Although the platform has all of the qualities of marketing gold, it’s been a difficult task to actually drive traffic to your website due to fewer options for linking and scheduling.

We reached out to social media experts for advice on how to drive more traffic back to a website from Instagram. Covering everything from optimizing the Instagram bio link to branding, here are 13 tips on how to drive traffic from Instagram back to your site.

Using links in the Instagram Bio

1. “When you post a picture or an Instagram story about a product say “link in bio” in the description. Then update your bio to link to that product. Most link clicks on Instagram come from people visiting your bio and clicking on the link that is there. Users don’t want to take the time to copy and paste a link that is in the description of a post. Also, consider using a link shortener and tracking service for the links in your bio so that you can better track the number of people who are coming to your site from Instagram.” – Steve Gow, Uppstart.io

2. “Instagram isn’t link-friendly for the average company. One way we like to use links is by encouraging users to click on the link in our bio through engaging captions. Whether you’re linking to an event that you’re hosting, a new blog post, or a job opening, we have found that catchy, to-the-point captions are a great way to convince users to visit your profile and click the link in your bio. Instagram contests also serve as a great way to entice people to click on the link in your bio. How? Simple. Just make one of the requirements to be entered to win to click the link in your bio and fill out whatever information necessary. Example: “Follow the link in my bio and enter your name and email address!” Offering freebies is another way to encourage people to follow the link in your bio to a landing page and enter in their information for future marketing purposes.” – Lacey Woltz, Digital Marketing Specialist @ Blue Compass

3. “Since the link in your Instagram bio is the primary link that drives traffic to your website, use branded links that feature your brand’s name, a keyword, and where the link will lead. This not only increases brand awareness and trust with your audience, but branded links can also have higher click-through rates than generic short URLs. Since the link in your bio needs constant updating, it is helpful to use a link management tool like Rebrandly that lets you edit the destination of the URL, or where the link goes.” – Hannah Harrington, Content Marketing Manager @ Rebrandly

Utilizing the “Instagram Story” feature

4. “I have recently begun using Instagram stories and have noticed and have seen an increase in engagement. The beauty of Instagram stories is that most people receive notifications & click to see what’s going on. If they are looking at another story, it automatically shows yours if you are “next”. Given the automatic “slideshow” aspect, it builds interest when it “disappears” too soon. Stories with text & action likely get more notice and engagement as people likely have to go back to read or see what they missed.” – Jenny Hester, Director of Marketing @ LIVE Design Group

5. “Instagram is an excellent platform for engagement. Many people like, comment, and even save images in their archives, but these actions usually don’t increase app downloads. Instagram stories are more effective in bringing people to a certain website by a link. But, they can get complicated because of quality and timing issues. Overall, IG is a very good platform for engagement and can be used as an interactive way to market your product, because people tend to spend their time on Instagram compared to other social media platforms.” – Yeva, Marketing @ Qube LLC

Always include a call to action

6. “I noticed an increase in traffic to my website from Instagram from two things: Scheduling my Instagram posts in Planoly so that I can prepare and then engage in real time. Second, by creating an Instagram Story every day, and giving my target audience a call to action to click the link in my bio to direct traffic to my website.” –Ashley Hill @ College Prep Ready

Seek inspiration from other accounts

7. “Curate high-quality content that is appealing to your target customer. To do this, look at 5 popular Instagram accounts you know your target customer follows. Emulate their post pattern and content schedule with your own unique twist. Don’t copy them. Just figure out what it is about their feed that makes it so appealing to your target customer and use some of those ideas in your own feed. Use white borders around your images to give them space to “breath”. All of this will help you design a feed that is more likely to attract the followers you want.” – Steve Gow, Uppstart.io

Don’t sell!

8. “First, I would ask, why are you wanting to lead followers away from IG? It is not a proven sales driving platform yet, so the secret sauce for some influencers is to keep the content where the fans are and to use IG for branding and PR, rather than sales. If you have determined that there is a true need to redirect followers, Instagram is tricky because not all accounts can use links.” -Julia Angelen Joy, PR Strategist, Z Group PR

Create one post around a product or promotion, and re-use it

9. “Instagram is a powerful tool for connecting with audiences and increasing engagement. The reality is that most people won’t see every post that you share. I suggest that clients make a standard post, a post on their Instagram story (with the link built in so users can “swipe up for the link”), and then post on their stories again one or two times over the next week. This helps ensure your posts are being seen by a higher percentage of followers and gives your link more opportunities to be clicked and shared!” – Alison Haselden @ Can I Rank?

Be consistent

10. “To increase conversions on Instagram you have to be consistent in your direction across your feed and your stories. If you want to drive people to your website you have to tell them WHY they should go to check out your website. If you are over 10K followers, don’t be afraid to use that swipe up! If you have less than 10K, you can still have high conversions rates from Instagram with a link in your bio. Make sure that the link in your Bio leads people exactly where you are telling them to go. If your content is driving your audience to your website, and they see a link in your bio that goes to your YouTube channel they may not loop back to your website and you have lost that conversion. Keep your directions organic and simple and include the WHY.”- Emily D. Baker, Esq @ EmilyDBaker.com

Use an influencer

11. We do a large amount of influencer marketing on Instagram. We have the influencer share a checklist from our service that we think their followers would be interested in. The influencer tags our handle in their caption.” -Vivek Chugh @ Listables

12. “We’ve amassed over 400K followers on our iHeartRaves Instagram page and we like to use influencers as part of our digital marketing strategy. Our target audience includes fashion oriented people who attend music festivals and enjoy electronic dance music. We engage in influencer marketing in a variety of ways. We find popular accounts who meet our criteria for selection, and we start a conversation to gauge whether or not it’s a good fit. Often times, we will send one of our products to an influencer for free, in exchange for an honest review that is posted to their blog or social media followers. In the case of Instagram, this leads to a ton of new followers for us, as well as sales. For us, the most important element of an influencer package aside from cultural fit is the overall reach of their blog or social media accounts. We measure our return on investment based on the number of new followers we receive, the number of impressions we receive, how much referral traffic we get, and of course – how many sales come as a result of the campaign” –Brandon Chopp, Digital Manager @ www.iHeartRaves.com

We hope you found these expert tips for binging Instagram traffic back to your website useful. If you try any of them out, let us know how it impacted your strategy in the comments below.

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Hannah is the content manager at Rebrandly, a link management solution that empowers users to put their brand name on all the links they share. With a background in marketing and creative writing, Hannah’s passion lies in telling compelling customer stories. You can find this American expat exploring the streets of Dublin or nestled up with a cozy cup of tea.